


The Prince

by luminescence (epistolic)



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistolic/pseuds/luminescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the War was lost, only then did news come through. Odin All-Father was dead, the Crown Prince Baldr was dead; the Great Hall of Asgard was entombed in ice, and a Frost Giant sat on her gilded throne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Prince

>   
>  _It is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves._
> 
> (Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Prince_ )

The rise and fall of the axe.

Beaten and dragged through the muck, he can feel blood at the back of his throat threatening to drown him. He is face-down, his cheek flush against the gravel and the slush of this morning’s rain, trying to hold his ribs, trying to crawl. His fingers are slippery. His left eye has swollen shut. With his right, he can see the blurred, streaking quality of the world around him – the heavy, armoured boots of the Giants, the gold of a dais, the glint of the axe-head like a pale, bright eye.

Someone is singing. Someone else is kicking him, aiming each blow methodically at the stomach he is trying to protect. He’s bitten through his bottom lip and he’s starting to think that his nose must be broken. It’s hard to tell, at this point. He tries to shuffle forward, pushing back with his knees, shoes scrabbling weakly on the stone; but then someone stomps on his back and all the air goes out of him.

“That will do,” a voice says.

The beating stops. He takes advantage of the break to curl up on himself, drawing his knees up to his stomach. He tries to blink the blood back out of his eyes.

He turns his face to the side to retch, but all that comes out is the blood – brown, murky.

“So you are the one they call Odinson,” the voice says. The vision in his right eye is swimming but he looks blindly towards the sound, trying to locate it. “They told me to be afraid of you. They told me that one day, when I am at my weakest, you shall come to take my throne.”

“Mmmf,” he manages.

“They told me that if I wished to rule, I would need to be rid of you.”

He is shaking. His head feels empty; his lungs much too full. His tongue is clumsy and sore, clogging up his mouth, forming the syllables reluctantly. “I am – ”

“I know who you are.”

He blinks up blearily at the shape in front of him. He cannot make out anything more than a few shifting shades, colours muted and smeared broadly across, bleeding into one another like wet paint. Black. Green. He can’t even focus on the creature’s face; can’t even tell if it is male or female. But he can catch the tell-tale flash of the axe, its wicked blade slowly rising up in the air. Oh, he thinks. Oh. His ribs are seizing up and he can taste copper. Sif’s goat, years and years ago, wandered off into the woods at the edge of the farmstead – he found her two days later, at the bottom of a small cliff with all four of her legs broken, crying like only dumb animals can cry, oh, oh.

He is shaking so hard now it’s as if his bones are trying to break free of his body. Everything trickles into his awareness as if through fog. Everything that rises, that pushes up against the pull of the soil, must come down; the only certainty in the world is descent.

The axe hovers for a moment at the pinnacle of its climb, and then –

\--

He jerks awake so suddenly that he knocks Sif to the ground.

She yells in surprise, and then she’s sitting on the hard grit of the path glaring at him: “Thor!”

He is no longer on the plains of Brodd-Fjorneth. He is no longer midway through his own execution. Instead, the bright landscape of Middlesmark leaps up all around him as if by a spell: the gravel path that leads down to the back of the house; the side of the barn; the fringes of the pine woods stretching away to the north and east, solemn green shadows lightened by the mid-morning sun. The dandelion flowers are just beginning to bloom, small yellow-pointed stars that peek out from between the wildgrasses. Dram, ten feet away and browsing. Still in full tack.

He looks about himself, startled. “Why am I here?”

“Why indeed!” Sif is still glaring, her dark eyes hot. “You are a meat-headed fool if I ever saw one, Thor, and as soon as I am up standing I am going to box your ears – ”

“Did I have a fall?”

“ – the next time I let you out of my sight I am going to put a bell around your neck, like we do for the cows, so that all the world may have warning of your idiocy before it arrives – ”

His neck and spine are sore. His neck, especially. He thinks of the cruel curve of the axe and rubs uncomfortably at his nape, trying not to imagine the bite of metal, the sharp and snapping give of bone. 

It is not the first time he has had this particular dream – a result of Mother’s stories.

“Come, Sif,” he says at last. “I cannot remember what happened.”

“No, you never do. And so you never learn from your mistakes.”

He feels gingerly along the back of his skull. “Did I hit my head?”

“I wouldn’t fret about that,” Sif snaps, getting up onto her feet. She raps him hard on the crown with her knuckles. “Your skull is as thick as Mount Ridden, and just about as amenable to common sense.”

He watches her move to lead Dram back. Slowly, the night before sinks in: the birth of Helgi’s second child, a daughter, and the flush heat of wine. Mounting Dram half-drunk in the dark. He still has the Mennua inside his pocket, the gold coin the size of a thumbnail given to every guest at the celebration.

Sif comes back, still spitting. “Not up yet, you lazy clod?”

“Peace, sister,” he says.

“You should tell that to Mother! All night she would not sleep, walking about the house – ”

“I am sorry. I will make it up to her.”

She eyes him doubtfully. “You are too late. I put her to bed with a sleeping tonic but an hour ago, so that I could come hunting for you. You will have to wait until she wakes.”

“You did not go last night?”

“No,” she says, shortly. “Though it would seem that I should’ve.”

“I did not get up to that much mischief,” he tells her, knowing already that she won’t believe him. She doesn’t help him up; but at least she doesn’t kick him back down into the dirt, which he concedes is progress. “I barely drank at all, to be honest.”

“Gorgoron told me you drank like a horse.”

“Gorgoron is a grower of chestnuts,” he says. “I would wager he has never even seen a horse.”

That makes her smile. Sif has a lovely smile, small and a little uncertain, like she’s aware that it doesn’t often cross her face. When they were children he would think up tricks – walking into walls, tripping over his feet, once even falling into a fountain and coming up spluttering, soaked to the skin.

“I hope you never marry,” she says to him now, handing him Dram’s reins. “I’d pity your wife.”

“And I would pity your children, if you are half so stern with them as you are with me.”

“It is for your own good, Thor.”

“Yes,” he tells her, taking her hand, “I know it.”

They head slowly towards the stables, side-by-side. It is a bright day. He has forgotten the nightmare already; its shapes and shadows, its whispers both fearful and dark, have been bleached by the sun. They have evaporated.

\--

He is splitting wood several months later at the bottom of the fields when the geese, normally penned at this time of the day, go reeling into the sky.

He watches them, stunned for a moment. They are not moving in any definite formation. Wild, screaming, they form great broken circles above the trees. He half expects to hear Sif swearing from the poultry yard: that damned weasel, Thor, I have told you countless times, but you only ever want to hunt _game –_

Dram, her sleek neck shining in the sun, pricks her ears forward and stamps uneasily.

The geese disappear flapping out of his sight. He stands there still, eyes narrowed, deciding which direction they have gone in. If they have gone towards Trilsmark, he will have to wrangle them back from Bilsmor tomorrow. Bilsmor will likely hide them. Or eat them all for supper; it has happened before. But if they have gone towards the river, they will be picked off one by one by the sea eagles, their feathers strewn across the rocks for the foxes to find – Bilsmor is at least willing to pay a favour for supper. The eagles are not nearly as accommodating.

He sighs, wedging his axe firmly into a block of wood. “Come, Dram. I suppose we must do something about it, or Sif will flay us both.”

Dram looks at him as if to say, she will flay us anyway.

“Yes, I know. But there is no harm in trying.”

They are but halfway through the lowest meadow when the ground rocks. A sudden and rolling shudder, like the earthquakes told in legends; Dram spooks, tossing her head against the reins, skittering sideways.

They grapple for a moment, horse against rider. By the time he has her calm again the air is quiet.

A prickling sensation is crawling up the back of his neck. He is barely breathing – listening like a deer at the wrong end of a crossbow, the non-existent stir of wind, the rustle of the apple trees bare of fruit; Dram champing against the bit; no birdsong, no hum of the insects, the forest-line dark and foreboding at the end of the field, but the strange buckling of the earth had not come from the forest – 

There is something bright and silver spreading across the distant roof of the farmhouse. He does not notice it until he turns his face in that direction; but then the sunlight catches, lighting up the thatching like a wildfire, and the fierce reflection almost blinds him.

He does not think of it straight away, but then: _ice_.

The Frost Giants rarely raid as far out as Middlesmark. Vilya, to the north, and Sapro, to the east, are attacked almost yearly – moderately large, with the best roads to the City, they are the two points of drainage where all the crops and livestock of the surrounding Twenty Marks eventually find their passage into the gates of Asgard Proper. In Vilya there are great silos of wheat, storehouses piled to the rafters with ripened corn; Sapro holds fruit, hand-woven cloth in bolts, sheep and donkeys and herds of fowl being swept in and out of her gates like so much dirty water. 

Middlesmark is in the middle of a piddling harvest and her barn is empty after her last dues to the City were made. Frigga is in Dorsmark. There is nothing here of value, he thinks; save one thing.

He is about to turn Dram towards the farmhouse when something knocks him out of the saddle.

“Be still,” a female voice says. He scrambles up to his feet, heart galloping, moving for the knife at his belt – something knocks him flat again. “Stay down until you have cleared your head.”

Gut instinct makes him struggle. “Who are you? Let me _up_ – ”

“No.”

He is being held down by something that he cannot see. No-one in Middlesmark practices magecraft except for Frigga, and then only to heal wounds, cure sickness – this is something else. A hot fear tightens in his stomach, followed quickly by rage; he is imagining Sif fighting Frost Giants alone in the courtyard, her sword flashing, her teeth bared in an animal snarl. 

Unprepared and unaided. Slowly, but surely, tiring.

“You cannot go back there,” the voice says. “It is already being overrun. You will be captured.”

“I have friends who need my help – ”

“You have friends who need you _alive_ , Odinson.”

The use of his name stuns him into stillness. He lies motionless on the ground, blades of grass prickling his neck, staring up dumbly at the sky.

“Where are you?” he shouts at length, no longer struggling. “Come out where I can see you!”

A figure emerges out of thin air to his immediate left, startling him. “This is your home, so I suppose you know your way around these parts. Where is the fastest path towards Vilramoth?”

“Loose these bindings first, and I shall tell you.”

“If I loose those bindings too soon, you shall run, and in the wrong direction.”

He loses his temper. “Damn you, tell me who you are and what is your purpose, or I swear – ”

The figure shifts out of the way of the sun and all of a sudden he can see her clearly. Asgardian, lightly armoured, tall and slim, with dark hair falling carefully down to her shoulders. A shrewd, clever face; a circlet of silver sits over her forehead. He squints and does not recognise the crest on her breastplate.

“I am a friend,” she says. “One who would see you in your rightful place, for I know who you are. If I release you, you must understand that we leave Middlesmark at once. The Giants mean you ill.”

“How can you know – ”

“There is no time at the moment to explain. Will you come with me, or no?”

He stares up at her. “How do I know that you are not my enemy?”

“Because I was a friend to the All-Father. He trusted and confided in me. It was he who told me how you came to be here – that he sent you and the Queen along by the Sidinor Road, through the Forest of Dera, first to Heidsmark and then beyond.” She lifts a hand and, soundlessly, Dram comes to stand beside her. “Tell me how I should come to know that, if your father did not favour me.”

He considers her carefully. Her eyes are a bright, cold green, the colour of emeralds. “Then let me up.”

“Which way to Vilramoth?”

“Back the way that I came. To the west.”

She releases him. He feels the blood rush back into his limbs; and then she is holding out a hand for him to take, small and slender, helping him back up.

“I cannot abandon my sister here,” he begins.

“I will send a message to the daughter of War, once you are safe.”

“Can we not – ”

“They are here for you.” She whistles and a horse appears from the next meadow over. “They will not harm her, for they are under oath – you must trust me, as your father did.”

“Under oath to whom? And with what purpose?”

“I shall tell you later. For now, we must move with urgency.”

He mounts, watching her do the same out of the corner of his eye: “You have not given me your name.”

“For the moment, you can call me Ziv.” She sits on the horse like a man, shoulders squared, spurring the chestnut towards the bottom of the meadow. Dram follows without him even directing her. “We will have time for stories once you are away from here.”

\--

They are taking the Low Roads. Tiny and cramped, barely more than a trail through the woods with the mountains a stony-faced wall on their right – even the air tastes scant. The trunks of the trees are all jammed close together, patchy with rotting bark and lichen, allowing only the barest scraps of sun to reach the saplings struggling up through the soil. The horses kick up clods of damp dirt. All around, the soft, insistent click of insect jaws, the smell of green and brown; every now and then the shrill cry of an unseen bird, buried deep within the foliage.

He is thinking about Sif. Now that they are perhaps a mile out from the farm, his cheeks and the sides of his neck burn with shame. Sif would never have left him to a band of Giants: back pressed up against the side of the barn, fighting cornered.

“I tell you, they have not harmed her,” Ziv says.

He jumps. Dram, usually so easy to startle, barely twitches.

“It does not make what I did any less cowardly,” he says, staring at the path. “I should never have left.”

“If you had not left, the Giants would have taken you back to the City. You are wanted for questioning by the King. Undoubtedly, had you been taken, you would never have returned alive. Few do.”

His stomach drops out, a hard, leaden weight. “What if they take Sif – ”

“The King would have no use for Sif,” Ziv says. “She has no claim to the throne. She is no-one.”

“But what use can he have for me? There is nothing he might gain from my questioning.”

She looks at him. A brief shard of light catches a ring on her finger, winking green on the gem. “When a subject is taken for questioning by the King of Asgard Proper, Odinson, that is only a very loose interpretation of what is actually done to him. Surely even in Middlesmark you have heard stories?”

“We don’t get much news of the court.”

“But do you not go often to Sapro? To Vilya? To Hulgasdeim?”

“No.” A great ravine has opened up to their left, vines and loose brush yawning down under the canopy of trees. “It was deemed safer for me not to attract any notice.”

“So you do not even know why they have come for you. Why you are wanted _now_.”

“I’d thought – ” He pauses, frowning, as Dram picks her way carefully over several exposed tree roots. “No, I do not know.”

“King Laufey is dead.”

She has his attention instantly. “How did he die?”

“He was assassinated by one of his own. The culprit has been put to death.”

He is recklessly angry; stars streak across his vision, and he says, “I wanted him for my own sword.”

She laughs, not even looking at his face. “My prince, you are but a pup still. You are not even come of age. Against a hardened Frost Giant warrior you would not last three blows.”

He yanks Dram to a stop. But no sooner has he tugged on the reins does she begin moving again, resuming her progress down the path. 

He tugs again, surprised; she bears it patiently, then ignores it.

“She will bear you to Vilramoth, and then you may have her as she was,” Ziv says, gliding past on the chestnut mare. “I am not taking any chances that you will bolt for home.”

He glares hotly at Dram’s neck. “Why are you taking me to Vilramoth?”

“Because it is not where the King expects you to be.”

“I thought you said the King was dead.”

“There is a new one. There is never any lack of kings – let your gaze wander and before you know it, they are everywhere.” He watches, surprised, as she turns her head to the side and spits. “Any brute nowadays can call himself King of Asgard. It is not like the old times.”

For a long while they ride in silence. Above them the canopy is thinning gradually as the ground slants upward, a slow, winding journey up the side of the mountain. 

He has never been to Vilramoth. He has heard that it is close to the sea, a moderately-sized city that was once much larger but has slowly dwindled ever since the start of the War. The people are afraid of the ocean now. The Frost Giants first came from over the water; great, tall ships, terrible to look on, their masts burnished with a black ice that burned to the touch, the dark sails still flaring at the edges with the blue fire of dead stars that they had passed through on their journey to Asgard’s shores.

“Are they going to kill us?” he’d once asked, bathed in the Scrying Stone’s blue light. “Are they – ”

Odin All-Father had swept the image away. “Child, you should not ask such things.”

“Why not? It is as good a question as any other.”

“It is not wise to ask a question of the future that will either make you careless in battle, or make you despair.” Odin had pulled him closer. “You must learn to be wise, Thor. All Kings are wise.”

“All Kings are brave, and strong. I cannot understand why you will not take me with you.”

“You will be safe here in the palace.”

“But you are taking Baldr!” he’d protested. He’d twisted his hands into the fabric of his tunic, feeling the gold thread bunch up beneath his knuckles. “How is it that he can go to war – ”

“Baldr is older. You are still very young.”

“But I can fight. I have been taught. You have seen me at my lessons.”

“I have seen you throw yourself into sparring sessions with warriors who are far above you in skill,” Odin had said. In the distance, the great dome of the Bifrost had lit up for the seventh time that evening, news streaming in and out by the hand of harried pages. “You have yet to learn the true art of war, my son.”

“But Father, I cannot learn anything about war while I am fortressed here!”

“You are wrong. The most that can be learned from a war is done so by not being in it.”

He still does not believe this. Trapped in Middlesmark, so far from both the battlefronts and the City during the War, he had heard nothing – could only guess at what was happening from the disorder of the larger cities. It had been hardest in the first few years, when every time his hand grasped an axe or a scythe or a piece of firewood, his entire body lit up with a blinding envy; he’d snuck out at night many times with the thought of saddling up Dram and riding for Heidsmark, feeling his way back to Asgard Proper by sense-memory and whispers. But he’d never managed it.

When the War was lost, only then did news come through. Lists were nailed onto boards in Sapro’s central square. There had been no weeping, no shrieks of despair in the streets – Odin All-Father was dead, the Crown Prince Baldr was dead; the Great Hall of Asgard was entombed in ice and a Frost Giant sat on her gilded throne. There was nothing to be had from crying. 

Sif had clenched her jaw very tight and then turned away. Frigga had clutched at his arm for only a moment, nails biting, almost drawing blood; and then she’d pulled her hood down over her face and whispered a prayer for the dead.

“I will avenge them,” he had told her, overcome with emotion. “Mother, I swear upon all the Nine Realms and the creatures within, I shall find – ”

She’d suddenly turned to catch his face in her hands. “No, Thor. I forbid you.”

“But would you have Father and Baldr unavenged, slaughtered – ”

“We are defeated,” she’d said. Her fingers cold with grief and the rain. “I have given Asgard everything that I have ever loved, save one thing – please, Thor. You do not know the power of Jotunheim now. You are all that is left of a line of kings; do not throw your life away on revenge when there is no hope of success. It is folly.”

“But I cannot bear – ”

“You must learn to, my son. We must learn to bear many things.”

Midway up the mountain he swivels in the saddle to look back. The woods fall away like a run of deep green silk; on the horizon a faint mist, a hovering ghost in the sunlight, still beckoning.

**Author's Note:**

> My first WIP in this fandom! Updates should (hopefully?) be frequent, though at this very very early stage I make no guarantees. :( But I do have plotty plotty things planned, and I hope you'll enjoy them!
> 
> Any and all feedback is much appreciated! Plus they help me write faster ;) For updates on any updates or future fics, feel free to add me on [LiveJournal](http://epistolic.livejournal.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/epistolic)! ♥


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